by The October 7 attack on Israel has sparked soul-searching on the Israeli left, undermining faith in a shared future with the Palestinians. It has created a crisis of confidence on the Israeli right, undermining support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It has brought ultra-Orthodox Jews, often ambivalent about their relationship with the State of Israel, closer to the mainstream.
Across religious and political divisions, Israelis are coming to terms with what the Hamas-led terrorist attack meant for Israel as a state, for Israelis as a society, and for its citizens as individuals. Just as Israel’s failures in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war ultimately upended its political and cultural life, the October 7 attack and its aftershocks are expected to reshape Israel for years to come.
The attack, which killed about 1,200 people, has collapsed Israelis’ sense of security and shaken their confidence in Israel’s leaders. He has shattered the idea that the Israeli blockade of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank could continue indefinitely without significant consequences for Israelis. And for Israel’s Jewish majority, it has broken the country’s central promise.
When Israel was founded in 1948, the defining goal was to provide a sanctuary for Jews after 2,000 years of statelessness and persecution. On October 7, that same state was unable to prevent the worst day of violence against Jews since the Holocaust.
“At that moment, our Israeli identity felt very crushed. It seemed as if 75 years of sovereignty, of Israeliness, had disappeared, in an instant,” said Dorit Rabinyan, an Israeli novelist.
“We used to be Israelis,” he added. “Now we are Jews.”
For now, the attack has also unified Israeli society on a level that seemed inconceivable on October 6, when Israelis were deeply divided over Netanyahu’s efforts to reduce the power of the courts; for a dispute over the role of religion in public life; and for the political future of Netanyahu himself.
Throughout this year, Israeli leaders had warned of civil war. Yet in an instant, on October 7, Israelis of all stripes found common cause in what they saw as an existential struggle for Israel’s future. Since then, they have been collectively hit by international criticism of Israel’s retaliation in Gaza.
And in parts of the ultra-Orthodox community, whose reluctance to serve in the Israeli military had been a source of division before the war, there were signs of a greater appreciation for (and, in some cases, participation in) the military.
Recent polling data paints a picture of a society in profound change since the Hamas attack.
Nearly 30 percent of the ultra-Orthodox public now supports the idea of military service, 20 points higher than before the war, according to a December report. survey by the Haredi Institute of Public Affairs, a research group based in Jerusalem.
Perhaps surprisingly, 70 percent of Israeli Arabs now say they feel part of the State of Israel, according to a November study. survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a research group based in Jerusalem. This is 22 points more than in June and the highest proportion since the group began surveying the issue two decades ago.
About a third of voters in Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party have left the party since Oct. 7, according to all national polls since the attack.
“Something fundamental has changed here and we still don’t know what it is,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, an author and member of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a research group in Jerusalem. “What we do know is that this is kind of the last chance for this country.”
Aryeh Tsaiger, a bus driver from Jerusalem, embodies some of these changes.
In 2000, Tsaiger became one of a small minority of ultra-Orthodox Israelis who served as a military recruit. At that moment, he felt excluded from his community.
“Joining the army was unacceptable,” Tsaiger said.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known as haredim, are exempt from service so they can study Jewish law and scriptures in government-subsidized seminaries. For decades, they have fought to preserve the exemption, which irritates secular Israelis as it allows Haredim to benefit from the public purse without doing much to protect the nation.
After Oct. 7, when he rushed back into the military, Tsaiger said he felt welcomed by the Haredim. His friends congratulated him, a Haredi rabbi gave him a special blessing, and several Haredi synagogues asked if he could attend Sabbath prayers with his weapon. Fearing more terrorist attacks, the congregations wanted his protection.
“That’s a big change,” Tsaiger, 45, said. “They want me there.”
Their experience reflects a small but significant shift among parts of ultra-Orthodox society.
Tsaiger was among more than 2,000 haredim who tried to join the military in the 10 weeks since Oct. 7, according to military statistics. That figure is less than 1 percent of the 360,000 reservists called up after Oct. 7, but is almost twice the average, the military said in a statement.
Neri Horowitz, a Haredi expert, said the change was too small to be significant and that the increase in social solidarity would decline as quickly as it did after previous turning points. An influential Haredi rabbi has already been filmed comparing soldiers to garbage collectors. Another video showed ultra-Orthodox seminary students removing a soldier from their institution, irritated by his recruitment attempts.
Tsaiger believes a more lasting change is underway.
“The same people who cut ties with me 20 years ago are now very proud of me,” she said.
For Israel’s Arab minority, this changing dynamic has left it in a perplexing and contradictory position.
About a fifth of Israel’s more than nine million residents are Arabs. Many of them identify as Palestinians despite having Israeli citizenship, and many feel solidarity with Gazans killed in Israeli attacks, a sentiment that has grown stronger as the reported death toll in Gaza has risen to approximately 20,000.
Several Israeli Arab leaders were detained in November after trying to organize an unauthorized anti-war protest. Others were investigated by police for social media posts deemed supportive of Hamas.
But some Israeli Arabs also feel a contrary emotion: a greater sense of belonging to Israel.
Dozens of Arabs were killed or kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, giving their communities a greater sense of solidarity with Israeli Jews.
“If I was given two options, Hamas or Israel, I would choose Israel without a second thought,” said Bashir Ziyadna, an Arab Israeli law student.
Several members of Mr. Ziyadna’s family were killed and kidnapped in the attack.
Ziyadna later became a spokesperson for the family as they pressured the government to do more to rescue their relatives. In the process, Ziyadna, 26, began to become more involved with Jewish society, forming ties with the families of other hostages and meeting Israeli politicians and leaders.
While he still feels Palestinian and has deep problems with the government’s treatment of Palestinians, the horror of October 7 and the feeling that he, too, could have died have made him feel more Israeli and strive to play a role. most important in Israeli politics. public life.
“I don’t want to help my community by criticizing the system,” he said. “Now I want to be part of the system to improve it.”
This growing social consensus has occurred despite Netanyahu.
Israelis have united with each other, through a shared belief in the military campaign led by Netanyahu. But they have not united around the prime minister.
Part of the right’s frustration with Netanyahu is rooted in how his governments fostered a sense of complacency about Gaza. Officials regularly and inaccurately talked about how Hamas was deterred and that Israel’s greatest immediate threats were in Iran and Lebanon.
The anger also stems from the fact that Netanyahu had presided over the widening of deep divisions in Israeli society and a toxic public discourse.
In times of such turmoil, some right-wing Israelis want more measured public discourse, said Netanel Elyashiv, a rabbi and editor who lives in a West Bank settlement.
Citing a character from the Road Runner cartoons who “falls off the cliff and keeps running for a while and doesn’t realize it’s unsustainable,” Elyashiv said: “The Netanyahu government is in the same situation. I think this is the end of his tenure.”
Regardless of Netanyahu’s personal fate, his approach toward the Palestinians (including opposition to a Palestinian state and support for settlements in the West Bank) remains popular.
More than half of Israeli Jews oppose restarting negotiations to create a Palestinian state, according to a survey held at the end of November by the Israel Democracy Institute.
Jewish settlers in the West Bank also feel they have conclusively won the argument over maintaining Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territory.
According to Elyashiv, the October 7 attack would not have happened if Israeli soldiers and settlers had remained in Gaza.
“The reason that hasn’t happened in Judea and Samaria is because of the settlements,” Elyashiv said, using a biblical term for the West Bank. “In terms of security, we have to be here.”
“Wherever we go out, it becomes a nightmare,” he added.
Some Israelis still say the conflict could be resolved by establishing a functional Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
But for others, the scale of the atrocities of October 7 has left them struggling to even empathize with Gazans, let alone maintain hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
In 2018, author Halevi wrote a book addressed to an imaginary Palestinian, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor,” in which he attempted to lay out a vision of a shared future between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East.
Since Oct. 7, Halevi said, he has found it difficult to even consider what that future will look like. As an observant Jew, he still prays for Palestinians, but more out of duty than empathy, he said.
“I spent years explaining the Israeli narrative and absorbing the Palestinian narrative, and I tried to find a space where both could live together,” Halevi said.
“I don’t have that language right now,” he said. “He’s not emotionally available to me.”
Nathan Odenheimer contributed reports from Jerusalem; Johnatan Reiss from Tel Aviv; and Jonathan Rosen of Rehovot, Israel.
